Summer Reading from page 53

participants eat completely vegan, mean-
ing no animal products and/or hyper-
processed foods, until 6 p.m., when the
restriction lifts until the next day. For
Bittman, the plan worked; he lost 15 lbs. in
30 days. He details the plan, along with 60
delicious recipes, in his new book, VB6:
Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight
and Restore Your Health ... for Good
(Clarkson Potter/Publishers).
In Tell Me the Truth, Doctor: Easy
to Understand Answers to Your Most
Confusing and Critical Health Questions,
(Hyperion) Richard Besser, M.D., the
chief health and medical editor at ABC
News, delivers practical, no-holds-barred,
sometimes counterintuitive answers to
the questions he hears every day: Should
I take an aspirin to prevent heart attack,
stroke or cancer? Are doctors being more
thorough if they order a lot of tests? Do
cell phones cause brain cancer? If I am
exercising, should I drink sports drinks?
And lots more.
In the biography The Baroness: The
Search for Nica the Rebellious Rothschild
(Knopf), Hannah Rothschild seeks to
understand the life of her great-aunt, a
member of the Jewish banking family who
gave up her traditional life as a member
of the upper class in the early 1950s when
she heard "'Round Midnight" by the jazz
pianist and composer Thelonious Monk.
Nica abandoned her marriage and moved
to New York to find Monk, devoting her
life to helping him and other musicians.
(The younger Rothschild also is the direc-
tor of a film, The Jazz Baroness, about her
aunt and Monk's relationship.)

54 June 27 • 2013

JN

You may have never heard of E.Y. "Yip"
Harburg, but you've definitely heard the
lyrics he created for tunes like "Brother,
Can You Spare a Dime?" "April in Paris,"
"It's Only a Paper Moon" and of course, all
the songs from The Wizard of Oz. In Yip
Harburg (Wesleyan University Press), a
new collection of more than 50 interviews
with Harburg, Harriet Hyman Alonso
gives a glimpse into this brilliant man and
ties the interviews together with cultural
and historical context.
In A Jew Among Romans: The Life and
Legacy of Flavius Josephus (Pantheon
Books), Frederic Raphael offers a biog-
raphy of Joseph ben Mattathias, a Jewish
general in the first century C. E., who
commits the ultimate act of betrayal and
becomes Titus Flavius Josephus, histo-
rian to the Roman emperor Vespasian.
Raphael also relates the tale of Josephus
to Diasporan Jews seeking a place in the
dominant cultures they inhabit.
Josephine Sara Marcus was a flamboy-
ant, curvaceous Jewish girl from New York,
an aspiring actress and dancer. How then,
did she end up the common-law wife of
Wyatt Earp, the most famous lawman of the
Old West? Ann Kirschner's biography of
Marcus, Lady at the O.K. Corral (Harper),
re-animates a character largely erased from
Western lore. For nearly 50 years, Josephine
and Wyatt led an adventure-seeking life
traveling from the Arizona Territory to
Alaska to Hollywood. Josephine's tale is one
of ambition, adventure and romance set
against the backdrop of the post-Civil War
years to World War II.
What do Canadian-born singer-song-
writer and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer
Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley, the son

of singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, have in
common? They are the two main players
in the trajectory of "Hallelujah" to become
one of the most-performed songs in his-
tory. The Holy or the Broken: Leonard
Cohen, Jeff Buckley dr the Unlikely
Ascent of Hallelujah" (Atria Books) by
Alan Light tracks the careers of both
Cohen, who wrote the song, and Buckley,
whose version of it became widely popu-
lar, and brings two very different men
together under a common theme: one
song and the lasting effects it has had.
Franz Kafka's dying request was that
all his papers be burned. Lucky for us,
his closet friend, Max Brod, denied this
request, editing and publishing Kafka's
novels and other works after Kafka's death
in 1924. Kafka struggled with a pervasive
sense of shame and guilt, which shows
itself clearly in his works. Now, Saul
Friedlander explores Kafka's life, without
letting posthumous favor cloud his view,
in Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and
Guilt (Yale University Press), the new-
est entry in Yale's acclaimed Jewish Lives
series. Friedlander probes major aspects
of Kafka's life such as family, Judaism,
love, writing, illness and despair — and
lifts the mask of "sainthood" often
attached to the writer.
In The Astronaut Wives Club: A True
Story (Grand Central Publishing), author
Lily Koppel profiles a group of Mad Men-
era 1960s NASA wives. Going behind the
glamorous exterior and exploring the
fame, fear and loneliness surrounding
their lives, she also delves into the friend-
ships (many still remaining strong) that
got them through good times and bad as
their husbands raced toward the moon.

Memoir

Tamara Shopsin was in India battling
lethargy and debilitating nausea. It wasn't
food poisoning or jet lag; she had a brain
tumor. In her memoir, Mumbai New York
Scranton (Scribner), Shopsin, the daughter
of notoriously short-tempered New York
diner owner Kenny Shopsin, chronicles her
battle with cancer and her road to recovery.
Shopsin tells of her brush with mortal-
ity through terse, scatter-shot prose and
hand-drawn illustrations. The supporting
characters of her story — her husband and
her father especially — shine, and the end-
ing to this harrowing tale is one you can
rejoice in.
As John and Jeanne Schwartz learned
the hard way, being the parents of a gay
son isn't always easy. After their son, Joe,
tried to commit suicide at the age of 13,
John and Jeanne realized it was time to
make some changes to make Joe feel more
comfortable with himself and his sexuality,
and to make others realize that Joe wasn't
different, but "oddly normal:' In his mem-
oir, Oddly Normal: One Family's Struggle
to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms
with his Sexuality (Gotham Books), New
York Times national correspondent John
Schwartz recaps, with help from Joe, his
son's struggles with identity. From finding
a hairdresser with purple hair-dye, to cre-
ating a "Joseph manual" for his teachers,
this memoir gives a deeply personal look
into the lives of the Schwartz family as Joe
grew to love himself as much as his parents
loved him.
Rebecca Dana had everything going
for her. After arriving in her dream city,

